


Ms Doubtlock

by TheWhiteLily



Series: Season Four Premiere Flashfic [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Crossdressing, Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers, Fix-It, Humor, Implied Romance, It's for John's own good, M/M, Sherlock Is A Bit Not Good, Spoilers, Written prior to The Lying Detective, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 16:20:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9192311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWhiteLily/pseuds/TheWhiteLily
Summary: John would rather have anyone else.  Well, Sherlock thought.  That can be arranged.(Yes, I went there, and I'm not sorry.)





	

The case was this: Save John Watson. Who would rather have anyone but Sherlock.

Sherlock cast a considering glance at the slipper where he’d successfully kept his emergency stash concealed for years… but no. Cocaine wouldn't help, not tonight. He’d need morphine to forget, and he never took morphine on a case.

Because he _had_ been given a case. Possibly the most important case of his whole career.

Bless Mary Watson, for knowing him so well, and for knowing John so well, too. Sherlock trusted her as he had no other to know how to manage John’s emotional outbursts. He’d always ended up making such pretty speeches to her when he forgave her sociopathic missteps.

Now she’d pointed Sherlock in the right direction, giving him the tools to get a handle on how to think about it. If it hadn't been for her, he might have imagined that he should leave John as alone as he had asked.

But she’d given Sherlock a _case_ , one Sherlock owed it to her to solve. He had to save John Watson, had to find some way to extract him from the self-destructive grief which had taken him too many times before. Two of those occasions now, admittedly, Sherlock’s fault.

Which made it all the more important that _Sherlock_ be the one to save him this time. He had managed to do that before, after all—and it had always miffed him that Mary had already done it for him the second time, by the time he returned. It felt somehow appropriate that he take this one for her.

Was that not good? He had a feeling there was something about not being supposed to engage in one-upmanship with dead people. Foolishness. Intuition was not to be ignored, and Sherlock could feel it at a deep level that it was important that he be responsible for saving John Watson’s sanity more often than he was for destroying it.

No matter his reasons, it was a difficult case, a worthy one. Complex. Possibly an eight, or even a nine. It was outside his immediate area of expertise; he hadn’t the least idea how to start, and John’s therapist had been singularly unhelpful in his mind palace. It was always possible that Sherlock didn’t in fact _know_ the answer to this question, which would mean he would have to actually seek the woman’s opinion in the physical world. Tedious.

In any event, the how wasn’t urgent, because for the moment he was entirely without access to John that would let him _apply_ any solution he found.

Because John would rather have anyone but Sherlock.

That was understandable. Not many people had ever preferred Sherlock’s company to anyone else at all, even if they hadn't just been let down by him in the most spectacular and permanent fashion.

But the kindness of friends couldn't be relied upon forever. Molly had to work. Mrs Hudson had apparently been assumed to have taken Sherlock’s side in any separation—and rightly so, she’d been _his_  landlady first after all. Obviously she would have been willing to help out with Rosie, but would she have been able to keep the little passive aggressive comments encouraging John to forgive Sherlock to herself? John apparently hadn't been willing to take the risk.

He was going to need to acquire help with Rosie long term from someone else.

 _Anyone_  but Sherlock.

Perhaps that could be arranged.

Sherlock leapt to his feet and went into the bathroom, frowning at his image in the mirror. John wasn't the most observant of people, but he could hardly fail to recognise Sherlock. Looking distinctive had always been a curse in his line of work—but perhaps in this case it could work to his advantage.

The cheekbones.

The cheekbones had to go; they were instantly recognisable. Filling in the line of his cheek with a latex skin would help to round out his jaw as well. He might not need much more than that.

He experimented with his hair, pleased to find that it was long enough—just—to draw tightly together high on the back of his head with a rubber band, pulling the skin back to distort the line of his face and expose his widow’s peak. A false ponytail attachment would look natural enough.

Coloured contacts, of course; they were always his first line of disguise. Some heavy eye-makeup. Perhaps a beauty mark to fix attention on a single point. Underclothes padded in appropriate places. A slump in his posture to disguise the broadness of his shoulders and to downplay his height, a habitual duck in his chin to shield the Adam’s apple. Perhaps a busy necklace to draw attention down away from his face.  He could roughen his voice with smoking, to disguise the fact that he was pitching it a little high.  Add a slight accent, perhaps Eastern European—he’d had enough practice with those that he wouldn’t have to think too keep it going.

In the right clothes, and in the right context, it could work. The manner would be the most important thing.

Ugh.

He hated acting over a long period; it was exhausting trying to constantly deduce the target for long enough to be what they expected, to keep ahead of the occasionally surprisingly accurate intuition ordinary people had for spotting a cuckoo in the nest.

John would be harder to fool than most, even with his current distraction. Sherlock wasn't going to get away with any little slips of persona, any clues to his true character that filtered through. He was going to have to be on his guard constantly—unless he could find another way to channel a natural behaviour in a way John wouldn't associate with him. But John knew so many of his personas, the ones that he could easily slip into because at some level they _were_ …

Ah.

Obvious.

He’d been suppressing those impulses for some time, out of respect for John’s indifference, but... as long as he was dressed differently, with a different assumed gender, perhaps….

It would be almost a relief to let himself act it out, to say the words of admiration he’d held in for so long out of fear of spooking John. Allow himself to be caught in the surreptitious glances and embarrassed smiles he normally so ruthlessly avoided.  Let them happen, without being dismissed out of hand for the mere fact of being a man.

And it would be safe.  John would never associate such behaviour with Sherlock—would easily dismiss it as having been an act if he ever found out the truth—but it would be easy enough to maintain. The opportunity to openly make cow eyes at John any time he needed to deflect suspicion would be no hardship. And the awkwardness John felt at it would instantly activate the amygdala, flooding his brain with adrenaline—the fight, flight, or fuck hormone, always a helpful therapeutic substance in his case—and would encourage him to look away in embarrassment, compromise his ability to consider any inconsistencies in Sherlock’s persona objectively.

And of course John was a new widower. Deeply in love with and fiercely loyal to his departed wife. He might think it was a little inappropriate for his home help to suffer from an obvious crush on him, but he would be kind about it, if mildly amused. There was certainly no danger of him endangering Sherlock’s disguise by taking him up on even the most blatantly obvious flirtation.

How unexpectedly freeing.

Once Sherlock had got close enough to John to gather information on his condition, he could to apply the appropriate stimulus—once he’d worked out what that was—to begin his healing and to turn the focus of his grief and rage away from Sherlock. And hopefully, eventually, send John—along with little Rosie—back to Baker Street, with Sherlock, where they belonged, Grandma Hudson always just downstairs ready to be called into action for babysitting in the event of a case.

Sherlock pulled the band out of his hair, wincing as it snagged, taking a small handful of strands with it. He was going to need equipment. Proper female paraphernalia. Professional advice. And assistance from the homeless network, if he was going to run a con making himself the only attractive option for childcare.

This was the most important case he could have right now, and he was going to solve it. He was going to save John Watson.

And he had a plan now.

Nothing could possibly go wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> At the moment, this is a one shot. I know exactly how things go from here—and yes, it has a happy Johnlocky ending—but it's a bigger story than I have time to write before the next episode and I think it works well enough as is. *shrug* Who knows, maybe there’ll be more—it’s a pretty sweet setup—but for the moment it’s complete and I’ll leave you all to your entirely justified feelings of impending DOOM.


End file.
